Page 12 of Gabriel's Angel

His eyes narrowed. When he cupped her face in his hands, his fingers were cold and firm. “There’s something about your eyes,” he murmured, turning her face fully into the light. “They say everything a man wants a woman to say, and a great deal he doesn’t. You have old eyes, Laura. Old, sad eyes.”

She said nothing, not because her mind was empty, but because it was suddenly filled with so many things, so many thoughts, so many wishes. She hadn’t thought she could feel anything like this again, and certainly not this longing for a man. Her skin warmed with it, even though his touch was cool, almost disinterested.

The sexual tug surprised her, even embarrassed her a little. But it was the emotional pull, the slow, hard drag of it, that kept her silent.

“I wonder what you’ve seen in your life.”

As if of their own volition, his fingers stroked her cheek. They were long, slender, artistic, but hard and strong. Even so, he might merely have been familiarizing himself with the shape of her face, with the texture of her skin. An artist with his subject.

The longing leaped inside her, the foolish, impossible longing to be loved, held, desired, not for her face, not for the image a man could see, but for the woman inside.

“I’m getting tired,” she said, managing to keep her voice steady. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”

He didn’t move out of her way immediately. And his hand lingered. He couldn’t have said what kept him there, staring at her, searching the eyes he found so fascinating. Then he stepped back quickly and shoved the door open for her.

“Good night, Gabe.”

“Good night.”

He stayed out in the cold, wondering what was wrong with him. For a moment, damn it, for a great deal longer than a moment, he’d found himself wanting her. Filled with self-disgust, he pulled out a cigarette. A man had to be sinking low to think about making love to a woman who was more than seven months along with another man’s child.

But it was a long time before he could convince himself he’d imagined it.

Chapter 3

He wondered what she was thinking. She looked so serene, so quietly content. The pale pink sweater she wore fell into a soft cowl at her throat. Her hair shimmered to her shoulders. Again she wore no jewelry, nothing to draw attention away from her, nothing to draw attention to her.

Gabe rarely used models in his work, because even if they managed to hold the pose for as long as he demanded they began to look bored and restless. Laura, on the other hand, looked as though she could sit endlessly with that same soft smile on her face.

That was part of what he wanted to capture in the portrait. That inner patience, that... well, he supposed he could call it a gracious acceptance of time—what had come before, and what was up ahead. He’d never had much patience, not with people, not with his work, not with himself. It was a trait he could admire in her without having the urge to develop it himself.

Yet there was something more, something beyond the utterly feminine beauty and the Madonna-like calm. From time to time he saw a fierceness in her, a warriorlike determination. He could see that she was a woman who would do whatever was necessary to protect what was hers. Judging from her story, all that was hers was the child she carried.

She had more to tell, he mused as he ran the pencil over the pad. The bits and pieces she’d offered had only been given to keep him from asking more. He hadn’t asked for more. It wasn’t his usual style, once he’d decided an explanation was called for, to accept a partial one. He couldn’t quite make himself push for the whole when even the portion she’d given him had plainly cost her so much.

There was still time. The radio continued to squawk about the roads that were closed and the snow that was yet to come. The Rockies could be treacherous in the spring. Gabe estimated it would be two weeks, perhaps three, before a trip could be managed with real safety.

It was odd, but he would have thought the enforced company would annoy him. Instead, he found himself pleased to have had his self-imposed solitude broken. It had been a long time since he’d done a portrait. Maybe too long. But he hadn’t been able to face flesh and blood, not since Michael.

In the cabin, cut off from memories and reminders, he’d begun the healing process. In San Francisco he hadn’t been able to pick up a brush. Grief had done more than make him weak. For a time it had made him... blank.

But here, secluded, solitary, he’d painted landscapes, still lifes, half-remembered dreams and seascapes from old sketches. It had been enough. Not until Laura had he felt the need to paint the human face again.

Once he’d believed in destiny, in a pattern of life that was meant to be even before birth. Michael’s death had changed that. From that point, Gabe had had to blame something, someone. It had been easiest, and most painful, to blame himself. Now, sketching Laura, thinking over the odd set of circumstances that had brought her into his life, he began to wonder again.

And what, he asked himself yet again, was she thinking?

“Are you tired?”

“No.” She answered, but she didn’t move. He’d stationed a chair by the window, angling it so that she was facing him but still able to look out. The light fell over her, bringing no shadows. “I like to look at the snow. There are tracks in it now, and I wonder what animals might have passed by without us seeing. And I can see the mountains. They look so old and angry. Back east they’re more tame, more good-natured.”

He absently murmured his agreement as he studied his sketch. It was good, but it wasn’t right, and he wanted to begin working on canvas soon. He set the pad aside and frowned at her. She stared back, patient and—if he wasn’t reading her incorrectly—amused. “Do you have anything else to wear? Something off-the-shoulder, maybe?”

The amusement was even more evident now. “Sorry, my wardrobe’s a bit limited at the moment.”

He rose and began to pace, to the fire, to the window, back to the table. When he strode over to take her face in his hand and turn it this way and that, she sat obligingly. After three days of posing, she was used to it. She might have been an arrangement of flowers, Laura thought, or a bowl of fruit. It was as if that one moment of awareness on the snow-covered porch had never happened. She’d already convinced herself that she’d imagined that look in his eyes—and, more, her response to it.

He was the artist. She was the clay. And she’d been there before.

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